from neighboring tribes. There has
been a problem of infertility in the tribe,
and they don't have a system for adop-
tion. So the young men abduct the chil-
dren, and then barter them to rich peo-
ple for cows." The only thing that many
of the tribes have in common is the ex-
perience ofinvasion and conquest by the
north.
One ofMahanà s officers asked me if
I wanted to meet some "defectors"-ex-
Sudanese Army soldiers who had joined
the S.P.L.A. Orders went out to get the
defectors ready, and after an hour I was
taken to a rudimentary parade ground,
where officers were putting a couple of
hundred recruits through their paces.
Despite the heat, they kept up a run-
ning, high-stepping march, chanting
loudly.
In the shade of a tree, about thirty men
sat in front of a standing officer. Idris
translated; in the nineteen-eighties,
Sudanese Arabic was imposed on Su-
dan's public-school system, and has
become the country's lingua franca. The
defectors were Nubans, local men who
had been recruited by the Sudanese
Army; until the conflict began, last
summer, they obeyed orders from Khar-
toum. Speaking haltingly, they told me
that they had come over voluntarily to
the S.P.L.A. When I asked the officer
why, after nearly a year, they had not yet
been recruited into the fighting ranks,
he explained that they were still being
retrained to meet the S.P.L.A.'s more
rigorous standards.
The men were most likely P.O.W.s
who had been allowed to switch sides
but were still being held in semi-captivity.
When I asked a few of them what they
wanted to do after the war, anxious
looks spread over their faces. One of the
oldest men, in his fifties, spoke up. "All
we want is to be soldiers for the
S.P.L.A.," he said. 'We don't need any-
thing else. Just the S.P.L.A." The men
around him brightened, nodding vigor-
ously, and they broke into a chant of
"S.P.L.A."
It was, to all appearances, a totalitar-
ian environment, and yet much of the
society seemed to participate willingly.
Among Sudan's many rebel groups, the
Nuban S.P.L.A. seems to be the closest
thing there is to a real "peoplès army."
In the south, the S.P.L.A. has exploited
and preyed upon civilians, Prendergast
56 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 23, 2012
ASTONISHMENT
Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises
and settles, surges and slides.
Under a great eucalyptus,
a boy and girl feel around with their feet
for those small flattish stones so perfect
for scudding across the water.
*
A dog barks from deep in the silence.
A woodpecker, double-knocking,
keeps time. I have slept in so many arms.
Consolation? Probably. But too much
consolation may leave one inconsolable.
*
The water before us has hardly moved
except in the shallowest breathing places.
For us back then, to live seemed almost to die.
One day a darkness fell between her and me.
When we woke, a hawthorn sprig
stood in the water glass at our bedside.
*
There is a silence in the beginning.
The life within us grows quiet.
told me, but in the Nuba the army and
the local population were completely in-
tertwined. "The rebels try and assist the
civilians, and in return the civilians give
succor to the rebels," he said. He sug-
gested that the situation had evolved in
response to the north's indiscriminate
slaughter of Nubans on the battlefield.
"In the Nuba Mountains, Khartoum is
faced with a population that is totally
opposed to it," he said.
S ince arriving in the Nuba Moun-
tains, I had heard rumors that the
S.P.L.A.-North was planning an
offensive against T alodi, a government-
held town about thirty miles south of
the rebel center ofKauda. It was one of
the rebels' main strategic objectives: if
they could seize the town, they would
eliminate a key government base on the
border with South Sudan.
The S.P.L.A.'s top military com-
mander, General Jogot Mekwar, lived
about fifteen miles from Talodi, in a
place calledJegeba, in the lee of a series
of low hills. His compound was a few
stone-and-thatch-roofed round huts,
surrounded by a stick fence screened
with palm fronds. A few watchful sol-
diers outside were all that betrayed
the presence of senior military men.
Inside, Jogot told me that the assault
against T alodi was under way. The re-
gime had been building up its forces
there for months, he said, and he esti-
mated that there were about five thou-
sand troops-a force large enough to
assault the rebels' stronghold in Kauda
and to cut off their access to supplies.
"From Talodi, they can close the road
to the border; it seems to them that the
south is supporting us on that road, and
that's why they put their main garrison
there." He couldn't tell yet how the
battle was going to go. "We started
fighting three days ago, but they are
very dug in."
Mter dinner, Jogot and his generals
sat in the courtyard, swapping stories